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Post by Deleted on Jul 16, 2021 22:37:26 GMT -5
…to the business?
So I started watching wrestling in December ‘99, and kind of had a mixed history before that. I had a Scott Steiner figure, a Rick vs. Scott handheld game, and rented some WCW games going back to ‘98. On the other hand, I remember kind of teasing friends in school who were fans about the business “being fake” - feel bad about that now for a variety of reasons, but I was very young - and agreeing with a camp counselor one summer who was criticizing the business. So considering all that, I guess the positives cancel out the negatives and I was overall neutral to the business before becoming a fan.
How about you guys? Before becoming fans, were you pro-wrestling, anti-wrestling, or just neutral to the business?
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Post by J'Dinkalage Morgoone on Jul 16, 2021 23:20:20 GMT -5
I grew up on it, we watched WCW when the attitude era hit, so i missed almost all of the AE. I was pretty young then and WCW was "less bad", we stopped watching around 2000, and started again around 2002.
I always knew it was scripted, id argue its not fake..they just know how to do it without hurting each other.
my earliest memories are of hogan going to WCW and the NWO forming, also of vader in WWF. Dad took me to shows when they came in our are, and theyd ususally come around my birthday. We went to shows in 96, 97, 98 (wcw, wwf, wcw)
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Post by TheSystem 1.5 on Jul 16, 2021 23:23:49 GMT -5
I got into wrestling when I was like 3 or 4 so I didn’t have an opinion on it pre-fandom
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Post by rkmo: Just a Fact of Life on Jul 17, 2021 0:01:54 GMT -5
Can't remember a time I wasn't a wrestling fan, growing up on basic cable only getting WCW Saturday Night
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Post by LK3 on Jul 17, 2021 0:11:20 GMT -5
Neutral I suppose. Never had any kind of opinion. I can remember my grandfather watching it a few times when babysitting me and my sister, but I never watched it with him or really knew what it was.
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Post by J'Dinkalage Morgoone on Jul 17, 2021 0:15:08 GMT -5
Neutral I suppose. Never had any kind of opinion. I can remember my grandfather watching it a few times when babysitting me and my sister, but I never watched it with him or really knew what it was. my mom tells me stories of her grandparents telling her to wake them up from their naps to watch wrestling. they apparently hated Jim Cornette (as she told the "the man with the tennis racket") and my great grandfather would get so mad hed throw things at the TV lol I never got to meet them. I assume they were watching NWA, Midsouth, or even WCCW as they lived in texas. |
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Post by LK3 on Jul 17, 2021 1:21:49 GMT -5
Neutral I suppose. Never had any kind of opinion. I can remember my grandfather watching it a few times when babysitting me and my sister, but I never watched it with him or really knew what it was. my mom tells me stories of her grandparents telling her to wake them up from their naps to watch wrestling. they apparently hated Jim Cornette (as she told the "the man with the tennis racket") and my great grandfather would get so mad hed throw things at the TV lol I never got to meet them. I assume they were watching NWA, Midsouth, or even WCCW as they lived in texas. After I became a fan there was a period of time where my mom would drive him over to watch PPVs with my friends and I. |
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Post by TKO Propagandist on Jul 17, 2021 12:02:51 GMT -5
Loved everything
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Post by greenjack1992 on Jul 17, 2021 14:34:32 GMT -5
Hard to know. I was eight years old in 2000 when I first stumbled across a match between Chris Benoit and The Rock on an episode of SmackDown! and was absolutely hooked from that moment to now. I'd had no experience of pro-wrestling before that (but I knew who Hulk Hogan was).
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Post by East Coast on Jul 17, 2021 17:15:31 GMT -5
well before i was a wrestling fan i was like 2 and barely sentient
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Post by Kill Em' All on Jul 18, 2021 16:12:33 GMT -5
Never had a preopinion; I thought it was cool. I had few figures before; and my brother would watch it alot. Then; I fell in love with it
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Post by JTG on Jul 18, 2021 17:55:13 GMT -5
Definitely neutral. Before I became a regular fan I knew what wrestling was and thought it was very interesting visually and recognized some of the big characters like Stone Cold, The Rock, The Undertaker, Kane, as well as guys "older guys" like Hulk Hogan, Roddy Piper, and Bret Hart. I also had some random action figures that my parents, aunts and uncles got me for my birthday or Christmas (BCA style figures if I recall correctly).
The cool thing looking back was that nobody ever badmouthed the business, at least not until much later in my fandom. It would usually just show up randomly as background noise on TV while I played with toys or maybe my dad was watching it for a minute before switching channels. But I never had a preconceived notion that it was "trash tv" or anything like that. My dad had even confirmed it wasn't real but didn't say it in a snide way. It was very matter of fact.
It wasn't until 2000 rolled around and my brother talked my parents into ordering No Way Out on pay per view that my fandom really kicked into gear. Seeing Triple H flip Cactus Jack through the cell and through the ring was game over (no pun intended). At that point I was hooked and began watching regularly.
Interesting thread! Took me down memory lane with this one.
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Joined on: Sept 20, 2024 13:50:00 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Jul 18, 2021 18:42:01 GMT -5
Just remembered another negative; in ‘98 or ‘99, I was flipping through channels at my grandparents’ and came across some sort of WCW cruiserweight match. My grandma - who I love a lot, but is very old school, very religious, etc. - was probably “freaked out” by the tattoos of the performers and started criticizing what was on the screen, I’m sure trying to convince me to turn the channel as fast as possible. Feeling pressured in the situation, I pretended to agree with her that wrestling was no good, and I promptly turned the station.
Hate that memory, considering how big wrestling became for me. But, during most of my fandom she supported me, buying several figures and shirts and of course loving the fact that years later I had a youth pastor who was a former wrestler (anything that got me involved in church was a plus for her).
I would say overall she hasn’t been as negative toward the business as my dad, and even he has had a few positives here and there.
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Post by Mongo Bears on Jul 18, 2021 18:56:50 GMT -5
I started watching in the “Rock ‘n wrestling”/Hulkamania era and I was under 10 so I loved every second from the start.
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Post by K5 on Jul 18, 2021 19:11:06 GMT -5
as others have related, i was an immediate fan upon exposure.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 18, 2021 23:22:59 GMT -5
I was 5 so I'm gonna go off the board and say oblivious lol. I loved boxing but you couldn't rent boxing VHS tapes, and since 5 year old me assumed wrestling was real, instant fan.
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Post by shanieomaniac on Jul 19, 2021 2:45:58 GMT -5
Ok, this is going to sound absolutely ridiculous but, prior to watching, I knew nothing about wrestling...
including that it was scripted.
Don't ask me why, I was very silly as a teenager, but I used to see advertisements for RAW during the commercials for Xena and always thought it was real. It's ridiculous, so very very crazy but yeah. I thought it was real and I continued to think it was real right up until the Monday after Survivor Series 98 when my boyfriend told me the truth (after my heart had broken over Shane's betrayal of Austin)
What can I say. I was a 15 year old girl. I had zero frame of reference or notion of what wrestling was. To me, it was some kind of fighting/reality show like The Real World or Road Rules.
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2sweeeeet
Main Eventer
Joined on: Jun 7, 2017 22:08:25 GMT -5
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Post by 2sweeeeet on Jul 19, 2021 3:53:51 GMT -5
My first exposure was when I was channel surfing as a kid and saw Warrior vomiting all over Mean Gene and I was very confused (I was like 5 or 6) and proceeded to watch some random cartoon.
Many years later, one of my friends in middle school tried to get me into it and I watched it with him over the phone for a few weeks. After tearing into it (e.g., "he didn't follow through", "he didn't even hit him", etc).
After a couple of weeks, I got it.
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Post by hbkbigdaddycool on Jul 19, 2021 12:59:48 GMT -5
Wouldn't you kind of have to be a fan to keep watching it??
I can see now fans turning away because they don't like the product or they just out grew it or don't have the time to watch.
But to me for everything I start watching - TV show or what not - if I like it I am gonna keep watching it. If I don't like it, I won't ever watch it again.
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Post by stc13 on Jul 19, 2021 13:10:46 GMT -5
I don't remember a time before I was a wrestling fan. My grandmother was a big wrestling fan - they were Italian immigrants in Pittsburgh in the days that Bruno Sammartino was a god - and any time we'd visit it seemed like wrestling was on. A lot of my earliest memories are of wrestling, but I couldn't tell you with any real certainty when I started watching.
Michaels/Jannetty's RAW matches are the first memories that I can say 100% that I watched when they aired, and I would have been around 5. But I was a fan of the Rockers, LOD, Natural Disasters, and others that would have been gone before then. But going that far back, I honestly don't know what I would have seen on the syndicated programs vs what I remembered from VHS tapes, highlights, etc.
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Hogan VS Flair
